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How to adjust a vocal chain for a high or low voice in REAPER

By StudioRescue Editorial

Published November 2, 2026 · Updated November 2, 2026

If you copied a vocal chain from a tutorial and it made your voice thin, boomy or sharp, the chain may be fine and the numbers may be wrong for you. Starting values on this site carry a warning that they depend on the voice. This article shows which values move, in which direction, and by about how much.

Search for this and you mostly find two separate guides, one for male vocals and one for female vocals. That is a rough stand-in for what matters. A low alto and a high tenor can share much of their range, and the settings follow the notes, not the label.

Why one set of numbers does not fit every voice

The key fact is that pitch and resonance do not move together. Stanford’s CCRMA course notes put it this way: women’s voices generally sit about an octave above men’s, but the resonances of the throat and mouth (the formants) usually differ by less than 25 percent. So a chain has four kinds of number, and each behaves differently.

That table is the whole method. Move the first row by a lot, the second by a little, measure the third, and leave the fourth alone.

Step 1: find your lowest note

You only need one number. Two stock ways to get it:

• ReaTune. Add ReaTune to the vocal track, open its Tuner tab, arm the track, and sing the lowest note you actually use in the song. It shows you the note name.
• ReaEQ. ReaEQ has a built-in analyzer display. Play your lowest phrase and look for the lowest tall peak. That is usually the note itself, though room rumble below it can confuse the reading.

Use the lowest note in this song, not the lowest note you can reach. A chain for one song can differ from the next.

Step 2: set the high-pass from that note

In ReaEQ, set the first band to High Pass. Start at 80 Hz or at the limit below, whichever is lower. Sweep upward slowly with your lowest phrase playing, and stop as soon as those notes lose weight. Then back off about 10 Hz.

This is why general advice to stay under about 120 Hz can undersell a high voice, and why a fixed 100 Hz can eat the bottom of a very low one.

Step 3: re-sweep the low-mid cut

The usual mud cut sits around 200 to 400 Hz, and that range means different things for different voices.

• Low voice. Those frequencies are mostly upper harmonics, so a few dB of cut usually sounds like tone, not missing notes. Your boom may sit lower, closer to 120 to 250 Hz, which is also your body, so go gently.
• High voice. 220 to 392 Hz runs from A3 to G4. For many high voices those are the notes themselves. A cut there can make certain notes dip in level while others stay put, which reads as an uneven, thin vocal.

The test is easy. Play a phrase that walks through several notes, then bypass the cut. If one note jumps forward when the EQ is off, the cut is sitting on that note. Make it narrower, make it smaller, or remove it.

One exception: if a boom stays at the same frequency no matter what note you sing, it is the room or the mic distance, not your voice. It needs the same fix on every voice. See why home vocals sound muddy in REAPER and how close to the mic to record vocals.

If a high voice sounds thin, boost at or just above your lowest fundamental, not below it. Below your lowest note there is nothing of yours to lift, only room. How to fix thin vocals in REAPER has the moves.

Step 4: nudge presence and harshness, but only a little

These bands follow resonance, so they barely shift. Working engineers often place a presence lift near 2.5 kHz on male voices and near 3.5 kHz on female voices, which we read here as lower and higher voices. That is a convention, not a measurement, though two independent sources agree on it. Sweep 2 to 4 kHz for a low voice and 3 to 5 kHz for a high one, and keep any boost to 1 to 2 dB.

High voices have one extra catch. On high notes the note itself can rise above the normal vowel resonance, and the first formant climbs with pitch, so a vowel can change character at the top of your range. A harsh spot may appear only on two or three notes. Do not EQ the whole vocal for that. Turn those words down with volume automation, or see how to fix harsh vocals in REAPER.

Step 5: measure your sibilance, do not assume it

Groups of women tend to measure higher esses than groups of men, but that does not predict your own. In one 2023 study of speech, the average center of an “s” was about 6.6 kHz for men and 8.1 kHz for women, with a spread of more than 1 kHz within each group. Linguists also report that part of this difference is learned, not anatomy.

So use the sweep range as a head start only. Try 4 to 7 kHz on a low voice and 6 to 10 kHz on a high one, and widen it if nothing jumps out. Then aim the de-esser at what you found, using how to de-ess vocals in REAPER. Those study figures are speech, not singing, so treat them as direction, not settings.

Step 6: keep the compressor, change one thing

Ratio and threshold need no voice-specific version. You set the threshold by the gain reduction meter, so it adapts on its own. Start from the ranges in vocal compression settings for REAPER, then check one thing for your voice.

• High voice: watch the top notes. Voices tend to get louder as they go up. Voice research describes both the softest and loudest levels tilting upward with pitch. So the top of your range can slam the compressor while the verse barely touches it. Lower the loud words with automation first, then compress.
• Low voice: listen for buzz on low notes. One cycle of 82 Hz lasts about 12 ms, against about 2 ms at 440 Hz. With a very fast release, a compressor can start following the waveform itself, which sounds like distortion. Lengthen the release. A normal 60 to 150 ms release is well clear of this, so it only matters if you have set very fast times.

Quick reference

What this will not do

• It will not make a high voice deep or a low voice bright. EQ shapes what is there. It does not change the pitch.
• It will not fix a part sung outside your comfortable range. Strained notes change the problem frequencies, and live engineer Chris Huff advises starting the EQ over when that happens. Often the real fix is a different key.
• It will not fit two singers at once. Give each their own track and chain. Our vocal bus guide covers what can be shared.
• It is not tested on your voice. Every number here is a starting point, so your ears in the full mix get the last word.